Utilitarian analysis is typically devoted to considering how best to reach a proposed goal.  It tends to follow an “if/then” format, as in:  “If one wants X, then one should do Y.”  Or, “In order to get X, it is best that one do Y.”  Utilitarianism is the language of most public policy debate in the United States today.  A utilitarian view of law and ethics can be accurately labeled “instrumental” or “teleological.”  (“Telos” is the Greek word for “end.”)

      In its development in the early 19th century, utilitarianism represented a break with formerly dominant natural law theories of law and ethics.  For a famous example of a natural law claim, read the Declaration of Independence’s second paragraph, asserting certain “truths” as “self-evident” – including the assertion that “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . . .”  To a substantial degree, the United States was founded on a natural law view of human nature and human society.  A natural law view of law and ethics can be accurately labeled “deontological.”  (“Deon” is the Greek word for “duty.”)

    Jeremy Bentham was a key figure in the development of utilitarianism.  In an essay written in 1796, he declared:  “Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, -- nonsense upon stilts.”  Bentham is perhaps best known for his 1776 assertion: “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”

      If you listen carefully to people arguing about legal or public policy topics, you will often hear one person argue from a natural law perspective while the other is arguing from a utilitarian perspective.  Discussions that involve people “talking past one another” in this way are rarely productive.